Record floods threaten major city in Russian Far East

A man and his dog sit outside a house on a bank of the flooded Amur River, on the outskirts of Khabarovsk, Russia, Thursday, Aug. 22, 2013. The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry says around 20,000 people have been forced to leave their homes since July in the wake of floods in Russia’s Far East. (AP Photo/ Igor Churackoff)

MOSCOW — Russians in the Far East on Friday scrambled to contain record floods which have affected more than 50,000 people and threatened to paralyze one of the region’s biggest cities.

Heavy rains pounding the Far East over the past weeks swelled local rivers, with floodwaters wreaking havoc in Khabarovsk, a city of nearly 600,000 that sits at the confluence of the Amur and Ussury rivers near a Chinese border.

The military were deployed to help hurriedly erect defenses against the floodwaters which halted transport in some areas of the city and reached high-rise residential buildings.

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Amid fresh concerns that the Russian government was ill-prepared to handle natural disasters, President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said he would soon personally inspect some of the affected areas.

The government will dispatch 10 ministers headed by powerful deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov to the Far East to oversee relief efforts, government spokeswoman Natalia Timakova told AFP.

On Friday, the level of Amur river, which serves as a natural border with China where it is known as the Heilongjiang river, has risen to 718 centimeters, according to Russian state weather service Rosgidromet.

“The water is still rising, we have not seen the peak yet, and it could climb to 725 centimeters by the end of the day,” said Yury Varakin, head of the situation center at Rosgidromet.